Another long -- but fun -- day in Xi'an

Sunday, 30 July. I started my day helping out with a Worksoft/Reynolds job fair at a site in Xi'an. (Thanks to Andy from Worksoft for loaning me a VERY nice tie! I didn't want to give it back...)

The job fair was fun and it was productive too. There were a lot of job candidates there talking with about 25 different companies, including Worksoft/Reynolds, and many of the candidates had previous experience with English-speaking companies so their English skills were generally (but not always) better than some without that experience. I was the ONLY foreigner there until about 5 minutes before the job fair ended, and he was French and was looking for opportunities for someone he knows in Xi'an. Jenny and I talked to 8 to 10 people away from the main tables. If they started to speak in Chinese, Jenny politely asked them if they could speak in English for my benefit. A few of them mentioned that their English wasn't all that good, but we started giving a standard response to that one: even if their English wasn't that good, it was DEFINITELY better than my Chinese. That helped break the tension a bit for the potential candidate.

Because of this job fair, I'm now a BIG TELEVISION CELEBRITY in Xi'an! That's right! It turns out that there was a small TV crew there from one of the local stations and they interviewed me. (I'm pretty sure that Andy did put them up to it...) Andy also helped prepare me by giving me a few of the important protocols around thanking the local officials for putting on the job fair, and thanking the Software Park too. It sure did feel a bit strange being interviewed by a young lady who spoke only Chinese. Andy translated her questions to me, then I answered. And Andy then translated back to the interviewer for me. So, the local TV station gets my talking head, with my voice turned down and in the background, and Andy's voice doing the translation in the foreground. Personally, after hearing Andy doing the translation, I think he has a career ready in broadcasting! Anyway, it was brief, only 5 or 6 questions, but it will certainly be an interesting memory of my trip and I think it will help give us some good visibility in the area.

After the job fair ended at noon-ish, Jenny and I headed back to the hotel so I could change before Jenny showed me some more of the Xi'an sights. We had lunch first at a small restaurant connected to (both physically and with some business arrangement) the hotel. This was yet another new experience for me in dining here: hot pots. Now, maybe I lead a sheltered life, and maybe these things are available around Ohio, and maybe some of you readers really think I do lead that sheltered life, but I'm pretty sure I've never seen one of these kinds of restaurants before or had any idea what they were before today. But I LIKED it! Here's the deal. This place is a lot like a fast-food buffet and is mostly self-serve. First the staff brings each diner a pot sitting on top of a can of "sterno" and they light it. This pot also has a large, for lack of a better explanation, "chimney" in the middle. The net effect is that the pot is more of a ring around this "chimney". The pot/ring has water in it and the sterno heats it to boiling. Here's the buffet part. You pick meats, vegetables, and so on from a buffet line and cook it in the hot pot. The meat goes in first and when it's changed color, it's ready. There were dumplings, ham, processed meat, seafood, and other things like that. And lots of vegetables like potatoes, brocoli, and cauliflower and plenty of Chinese vegetables. So, you get to pick your own food and cook it right at your table. I really did like the food and I liked being able to pick exactly what I wanted. I'm definitely gonna have to do that again before my trip is done!

On to the sightseeing. Jenny took me to a place called Tang Paradise, a large pay-to-enter park in Xi'an. We spent the entire rest of the day there. This place is really awesome! Read on...

The park is themed to the Tang Dynasty, 607-918AD. There are a lot of sights and buildings around the park that educate the visitor to this era. There is also a very nice theater (we watched the main show) and the largest water-screen show in the world. More on the water screen show later.


Here's the main entrance to the park.















This is a cool display outside the main gate showing the arrival of the Great Tang Emperor. There are two of these displays, although these pictures only show one of them. Note the small fountains coming out of pavement there. They only spray a few inches up but they make a nice effect for the incoming visitors. Watch later in this report for these same displays at night, when they really look wonderful!















I couldn't resist taking this shot. The sign says, "For Your Security, Don't Play in the Water". I guess these two couldn't read yet. :-) The water was outside the main entrance.














I shot the above photo while waiting for Jenny to complete a transaction at the main business office. While I waited, and only a moment after this shot was taken, a Chinese couple came up to me and after a little fancy sign language, I thought I had it figured that they wanted me to take their picture for them. Nope. What they wanted was a shot of each of themselves with an American! In other words, I became the tourist attraction! What a hoot! (Maybe they had heard about my big Xi'an television debut earlier in the day...) So I politely obliged them, standing at a pole with one them while the other took the picture of their mate with the funny-looking foreigner. How funny is that! (As an aside, I have frequently caught people staring at the funny looking gray-bearded foreigner. Americans are a pretty uncommon sight around here. It's a good thing I don't easily get self-conscious...)

This is Jenny, standing in front of the Silver Bridge Waterfall.















These are the Pure Gold Walking Dragons. Personally, I think they look a little underfed...














At one vantage point, there was a nice-sized hill to hike up and I noticed that you could see the Big Goose Pagoda from it. The Pagoda is in the center of the photo. (This Pagoda, remember, is where the awesome nighttime fountain display is from earlier in this trip, on July 25.)














Next we encountered an area of Buddha scupltures. These next few shots are various poses of Buddha's hands. This one is "Buddha Alms Bowl Seal".















One interesting thing about this Buddha hands sculpture was the sign in front. Can you read it? It says, in English, "Don't Scramble, Please!" (No climbing.) Jenny and I did notice a number of amusing, and probably literal, translations to English signs in the park.




















Here are more of the Buddha hands sculptures. I'm afraid I don't know remember what all of these were, specifically but they were nice.





















This is a view of the Ziyun Ruyi Tower across the lake , where the water screen show is held. We later sat on the steps in the front by the water to watch that show.















These shots were taken in a short little show that was meant to highlight the fashions of the Tang Dynasty. These shots are all a little too red because of the lighting. I tried to clean them up a little before posting them, but with only mixed success. But you will certainly get the idea of these very ornate outfits.






























This is the Flag Pavillion, with part of the Elegant Lady Area in the foreground.




















More of the Elegant Lady area.















After walking the grounds for quite some time, Jenny and I headed for the performance in the Phoenix Theater, "Dream Back to the Great Tang Dynasty", shown in 6 episodes over about and hour or so. There were large text displays on either side of the stage telling the story of each of the 6 episodes. The English translations of these (first scrolled the Chinese) was pretty fractured and I had a little difficulty understanding parts of it. The performance was very lavishly done and I highly recommend it. They didn't allow photos until after the performance and I caught this shot of only some of the cast just moments before the curtain came down.















Here's a poster outside the Phoenix Theater advertising the show, giving a little better idea of just how big the cast is. This show was really great!














After the show at the Phoenix Theater, Jenny and I had a nice dinner at a restaurant on the park grounds. Notable for this restaurant is that it allows customers from the street as well as from the park, but they want to make sure that they don't allow street customers into the park without paying. So on our way in they snapped a photo of us at a turnstile kiosk, and the kiosk spit out a UPC-encoded label that was affixed by the staff to our bags. When we were done eating and headed back into the park, they scanned the UPC labels and up popped our pictures on the kiosk!


After dinner, Jenny and I headed for the Ziyun Rui Tower for the water screen show. These next three shots are of a "show before the show" presented right at the lake's edge. The basic story being presented was of the emperor choosing a bride, in this case an unsuspecting female from the audience on the steps.

















This is a shot of the Big Goose Pagoda at night from our vantage point on the steps in front of the water screen.





















Well, it took me a week but I finally managed to get an astrophoto! This is the 5-day-old moon over the corner of the tower.















Next came the water screen show. This thing was simply stunning. It's hard to put into words just how impressive it was. But I'll try to describe it. There was an area of fountains in front of the steps we were sitting on, and there were some special sprays that produced a very fine mist. Upon this mist (in three separate "screens", left, center, and right) were projected images from projectors in the lake behind these "screens". The effect felt a bit out of focus but quite cool anyway. So, anyway, this show (all spoken in Chinese) was basically a whimsical tale of a man and his animal friend. The man's friend speaks very high and very fast, and sounds like a Chinese version of Alvin the Chipmunk. There is also a pirate, and this is a bad pirate who has stolen time. So the man and his friend, using the man's time machine, travel through time chasing this pirate. They stop at various times and have misadventures in each stop. At one of the stops the man encounters a queen or princess, I'm not sure which, and they become romantically involved. He also gets into trouble with the local emperor and is imprisoned for a while. Eventually, he captures the pirate who stole time and everything is restored. And, of course, the man gets the girl (princess/queen) and all is happy ever after.

The show is done with bits on each of the three screens, sometimes only one or two, other times all three, with the three screens interacting. For instance, the characters might appear in the time machine on the left screen and move to the center one.

One really cool thing, after having spent the day on Saturday at the Terra Cotta Army museum, was that this man and his friend stop at the Terra Cotta Army and they start coming to life! It was pretty neat seeing these clay figures suddenly come to life and walk away.

This show would be impressive enough with just the water screens and the story, but there were lights, green lasers, full-blown fireworks, and pyrotechnics and torches as well. This was a very well-staged production and I know I just can't do it justice in mere words. I strongly recommend to any visitor to Xi'an to take in this show!



This is a shot of the left and center water screens. On the left side of the photo you can see a dinosaur.















This is the queen/princess on the center screen.














This is, of course, the pirate's flag.















This photo shows all three screens.















This is a boat (maybe the pirate's) on the right screen.















The bad guy: the pirate.















After the man restores time after capturing the pirate, he wins the hand of the queen/princess and they live happily ever after. This is on the right screen and the center screen (at the left edge of this photo) shows big hearts.














These next several shots give you an idea of how extravagant the finale was, with all the fireworks and pyro. You could feel the blast from the pryos at the top of the steps where we sat.






































































I caught the fountains in full-color illumination during the finale.














And it wouldn't be a finale without fireworks!
















Here are the displays outside the front of the main gate, now at dark, showing how pretty they are when illuminated.


































Thus ends my final weekend as a tourist in Xi'an. I will be leaving here at the end of this coming week, after more training in the office. I must say that I've seen some very awesome things here. Thanks to Jenny for showing me around the park today. It was truly fantastic!